Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

afikra

Formerly afikra's Book Club, this podcast series calls on anyone who is interested in literature from the Arab world to spend time reading along with the entire afikra community and discover some of the best books and writers that came out of the region. We interview Arab authors about books they’ve written in Arabic or English (and sometimes French), and non-Arab authors who have written extensively about the region, delving into their literary journey until present day. We also invite bookworms to dissect some of the most noteworthy literary works from the region.

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Top 10 Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Eyeliner: A Cultural History | Zahra Hankir

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

04/30/24 • 55 min

This episode was recorded on March 27th, 2024.

Zahra Hankir is a Lebanese-British journalist, editor and author. She was awarded a Jack R. Howard Fellowship to attend the Columbia Journalism School and holds degrees in politics and Middle Eastern studies. Her first book "Our Women on the Ground" was a bestseller and won the Susan Koppelman award for best anthology in feminist studies. This second book "Eyeliner: A Cultural History" was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ pick and had starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal.

Connect with Zahra 👉 https://www.instagram.com/zahrahankir/?hl=en

Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊 https://spoti.fi/47I59ns

Hosted by:

Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://www.instagram.com/mikey_mu/?hl=en-gb

FOLLOW & RATE THE AFIKRA PODCAST:

» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/afikra-book-club/id1646400790

» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4khpLDZ77PINLupT7xEIv7

» Anghami: https://play.anghami.com/podcast/1044638525

THIS SERIES IS PART OF THE AFIKRA PODCAST NETWORK

Explore all episodes in this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfYG40bwRKl5xaTkBDrUKLCulvoCE8ubX&feature=shared

ABOUT AFIKRA

afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region – past, present and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.

📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide http://afikra.com/chapters

🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly http://afikra.com/podcasts

⚡ Become a member: https://www.afikra.com/membership

🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afikra_

🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afikra.official

🔗 Twitter: https://twitter.com/afikra

FOLLOW & RATE THE EHKILI PODCAST:
» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/afikra-book-club/id1646400790
» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4khpLDZ77PINLupT7xEIv7
» Anghami: https://play.anghami.com/podcast/1044638525
THIS SERIES IS PART OF THE AFIKRA PODCAST NETWORK
Explore all episodes in this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfYG40bwRKl5xaTkBDrUKLCulvoCE8ubX&feature=shared
ABOUT AFIKRA
afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region – past, present and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.
📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide http://afikra.com/chapters
🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly http://afikra.com/podcasts
⚡ Become a member: https://www.afikra.com/membership
🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afikra_
🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afikra.official
🔗 Twitter: https://twitter.com/afikra

Short Stories from Arab Cities | Exploring Urban Narratives With the Co-Editors of "Mudun" Reem Khorshid & Faris Bseiso

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

04/04/25 • 48 min

In this episode of Ehkili, we speak with Reem Khorshid and Faris Bseiso about their literary project Mudun, published by Kaph Books and supported by the Barjeel Art Foundation. They trace the origins of this anthology of short stories about Arab cities, which began as a pandemic project and grew into a collection featuring narratives both in Arabic and English. Highlighting diverse and often underrepresented urban experiences, the co-editors delve into the themes, selection process, and unique visual elements of the book. They reflect on the significance (and often danger) of nostalgia, the representation of city life, and the balance of stories to capture the essence of various cities across the Arab world. Tune in to hear about the compelling stories, standout illustrations, and the insightful reasons behind their editorial decisions.
00:00 Introduction
01:25 The Genesis of Mudun
05:36 Short Stories and Their Significance
07:35 Architectural and Urban Heritage
17:05 Nostalgia in Urban Narratives
20:43 Illustrations and Their Impact
26:30 Winners and Their Stories
36:55 Misunderstood Arab Cities
46:56 Conclusion and Future Prospects
Reem Khorshid is an architect and researcher holding a bachelor's degree in Architectural Engineering and Technology from Cairo University, Egypt. She previously worked as the lead researcher of ‘Building Sharjah’, a book about modern architecture in Sharjah that documents the emirate’s architecture and urban development. Reem has worked briefly on other research projects in Egypt about Cairo’s modernism and urban Informality. She's been a panelist at the Arab Conference at Harvard. Reem had also spoken at Yale University’s Gulf Architecture Symposium and the 10th Gulf Research Meeting at the University of Cambridge. Her articles have been featured by Egypt’s Mada Masr and the Daily News Egypt.
Connect with Reem 👉 https://www.instagram.com/reemkhorshid/
Faris Bseiso is a Palestinian-Syrian entrepreneur, writer and co-founder and CEO of Cipher Media, a licensing marketplace that supplies music to brands and professional sports teams for social media. In the publishing world, Bseiso most recently was a judge and editor for Mudun, the published anthology that followed the Barjeel Art Foundation's short story competition. As a writer, Bseiso has published bylines with CNN and Bloomberg, and short stories in various regional magazines. Now based in New York, Bseiso is also an ambassador for afikra and a DJ at Arab events in the city.
Connect with Faris 👉 https://www.instagram.com/bseisofaris/
Buy the book from Kaph Books 👉 https://www.kaphbooks.com/books/mudun-short-stories-arab-world/
Read online via Rusted Radishes 👉 https://rustedradishes.com/mudun-short-story-prize/
Explore Barjeel Art Foundation 👉 https://www.barjeelartfoundation.org/
Hosted by:
Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://www.instagram.com/mikey_mu/?hl=en-gb
Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊 https://spoti.fi/47I59ns

Coming of Age in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn | Aisha Abdel Gawad

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

07/31/23 • 53 min

Writing Between Two Moons: An Arab-American coming of age story set in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn during the “War on Terror”. Author Aisha Abdel Gawad sheds light on her experience writing the novel while balancing her work as a high-school teacher, capturing Bay Ridge’s unique community in her book, and her creative process.

Together, Mikey and Aisha reflect on the post-9/11 War on Terror, age of surveillance, and how this impacted the Arab-American community. Aisha also shares her advice for aspiring novelists and her must-reads for high-school students.

Aisha Abdel Gawad is a writer and high-school teacher. She won the 2015 Pushcart Prize for her short-story “Waking Luna”. After college, Aisha worked at the Arab American Association of New York in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Her debut novel, Between Two Moons, is a coming of age story set in Bay Ridge during the post-9/11 War on Terror.

Created & hosted by Mikey Muhanna

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

Book Club is an interview series that calls for afikra community members, who are interested in literature and reading, to spend time reading along with the entire community. Books in Arabic and English will be announced on afikra’s reading list and the members will be asked to do the reading at home at their leisure and then join afikra for a conversation with the authors of those books. Every two weeks, a conversation will be held with an author to discuss their work and the book in particular. Individuals joining the call will be expected to have read the book and prepared questions regarding the context, motivation, and background stories. Following the interview, there is a moderated town-hall-style Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience ‎on Zoom.‎ Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp

Follow

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Support

www.afikra.com/support

About afikra:‎

afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity.
Read more about us on afikra.com

Belonging, Divorce & Summer in Egypt | Malaka Gharib

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

05/29/23 • 61 min

In this episode of Book Club, Malika Gharib joins us to share her musings on what it means to be an artist, the symbiotic relationship between journalism and comics, as well as what the 'American Dream' truly means. She reflects on growing up as a first-generation Filipino Egyptian, her changing relationship with her heritage, and how she uses her work as a medium to grapple with questions of identity, family, and lived experience. Malika Ghareeb, is a journalist, cartoonist, and graphic novelist. She's the artist and author of I Was Their American Dream which reflects on growing up first-generation Filipino-Egyptian, and which was the winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award. By day Malika is the digital editor of the NPR podcast Life Kit. Her reporting work for NPR has been recognized with two Gracie Awards. Before joining NPR, she worked at the Malala Fund.

Suad Amiry | Mother of Strangers

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

11/01/22 • 60 min

Suad Amiry talked about her book, "Mother of Strangers: A Novel," which is a story of young love set in Jaffa in between 1947 and 1951.

Suad Amiry is a Palestinian writer and architect living in the West Bank town of Ramallah. She studied architecture at the American University of Beirut, the University of Michigan, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her parents went from Palestine to Amman, Jordan. She was brought up there and went to Lebanon's capital of Beirut to study architecture. Her book, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law, has been translated into 19 languages, the last one in Arabic, was a bestseller in France. The book was awarded in 2004 the prestigious Viareggio Prize in Italy. From 1991 to 1993 Amiry was a member of a Palestinian peace delegation in Washington D.C. She is Director and founder of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation, the center was founded in 1991; the first of its kind to work on the rehabilitation and protection of architectural heritage in Palestine. Amiry was a member of staff at Birzeit University until 1991, since then she has worked for Riwaq where she is the director. Riwaq received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2013 for the Revitalisation of Birzeit Historic Centre. She was appointed as a vice-chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Birzeit University in 2006.

Created by Mikey Muhanna

Hosted by: Yasmin Khawaja

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

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Sahar Mustafah | Reversing Stereotypes Through Literature

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

10/12/22 • 49 min

Sahar Mustafah talked about her book "The Beauty of Your Face." The novel is about a Palestinian American woman wrestles with faith, loss, and identity before coming face-to-face with a school shooter, it navigates a country growing ever more divided.

The daughter of immigrants, Sahar Mustafah explores her Palestinian heritage in her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. Mustafah is a Willow Books Grand Prize Winner for Code of The West, was named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and is a member of Voices Protest and Radius of Arab American Writers. Her debut novel, The Beauty of Your Face, was named a The New York Times Book Review Notable Books of 2020 and a Finalist for the 2021 Palestine Book Award. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award and chosen for Los Angeles Times “United We Read.” Mustafah writes and teaches outside of Chicago.

Created by Mikey Muhanna

Hosted by: Yasmin Khawaja

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

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The Turtle of Oman & Michigan | Naomi Shihab Nye

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

08/22/22 • 57 min

Naomi Shihab Nye talked about her books ‘The Turtle of Oman’ and ‘The Turtle of Michigan. The books are about Aref as he travels from Muscat, Oman, to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye is the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate.

Created and hosted by Mikey Muhanna

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

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Arab Queer Literature & NYC's Little Syria | Zeyn Joukhadar

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

08/22/22 • 27 min

Zeyn Joukhadar talked about his book ‘The Thirty Names of Night: A Novel’.

Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of the novels The Map of Salt and Stars, 2018, and The Thirty Names of Night, 2020 and a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI). His work has appeared in KINK: Stories(eds. RO Kwon & Garth Greenwell), Salon, The Paris Review,Shondaland, [PANK], Mizna, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. He is also the guest editor of the 2020 Queer + Trans Voices Issue of Mizna and a Periplus Collective mentor. The Thirty Names of Night won the 2021 Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award and the 2021 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction, and was a December 2020 Indie Next Book Pick.

Created by Mikey Muhanna

Hosted by Mikey Muhanna & Lina Barkawi

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

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About afikra:‎

Kareem Abu-Zeid | Arab Poetry & Translations

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

08/22/22 • 28 min

Kareem James Abu-Zeid talked about his translations of ‘Exhausted on the Cross”by Najwan Darwish and “Confessions” by Rabee Jaber.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator, editor, writer, teacher, and scholar who works across multiple languages. As an acclaimed translator of Arabic literature, he works with prominent English-language publishing houses to introduce the writings of Arab poets and novelists to a broad audience, seeking to promote Arabic literature in the US and around the world. While he enjoys translating all kinds of texts, he is particularly fond of Arabic poetry.

Created & hosted by Mikey Muhanna, afikra

Edited by: Ramzi Ramman

Theme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/

About Book Club:

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www.afikra.com/support

About afikra:‎

Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora | Sahar Mustafah Interviews Susan Muaddi Darraj

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

02/18/25 • 50 min

In this episode of Ehkili, Sahar Mustafah welcomes author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her recent anthology, "Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora." The conversation highlights the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices, the challenges of publishing during the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, and the vital role of Palestine Writes. Darraj shares insights on the anthology's diverse range of contributors, the importance of representing multi-faceted Palestinian experiences, and future projects for the press, including an anthology of writings by young people from Gaza.
00:00 Introduction
01:44 Discussing "Ask the Night for a Dream"
03:24 Palestinian Identity and Media Representation
06:41 The Palestine Writes Literature Festival
09:19 Launching the Palestine Writes Press
11:50 Challenges and Triumphs in Publishing
14:34 Anthology Contributions and Editorial Decisions
25:43 Future Projects and Young Voices from Gaza
35:09 Activism Through Publishing
45:52 Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks
Link to the book 👉 https://palestinewrites.org/product/ask-the-night-for-a-dream-palestinian-writing-from-the-diaspora-2024/
Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab-American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection "A Curious Land," as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel "Behind You Is the Sea," was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books. It was also longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award.
Connect with Susan 👉 https://www.instagram.com/susandarraj/
Hosted by Sahar Mustafah 👉 https://www.instagram.com/saharmustafahwriter/
Sahar Mustafah is a Willow Books Grand Prize Winner for "Code of The West," was named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and is a member of Voices Protest and Radius of Arab American Writers. Her new novel, "The Beauty of Your Face," was named one of The New York Times' Notable Books of 2020. Mustafah earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. She lives in Chicago and explores her Palestinian heritage in her writing.
Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊 https://spoti.fi/47I59ns

Show more best episodes

Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World

afikra

Top 10 Ehkili | Books & Literature from the Arab World Episodes

Eyeliner: A Cultural History | Zahra Hankir

Short Stories from Arab Cities | Exploring Urban Narratives With the Co-Editors of "Mudun" Reem Khorshid & Faris Bseiso

Coming of Age in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn | Aisha Abdel Gawad

Belonging, Divorce & Summer in Egypt | Malaka Gharib

Suad Amiry | Mother of Strangers

Sahar Mustafah | Reversing Stereotypes Through Literature

The Turtle of Oman & Michigan | Naomi Shihab Nye

Arab Queer Literature & NYC's Little Syria | Zeyn Joukhadar

Kareem Abu-Zeid | Arab Poetry & Translations

Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora | Sahar Mustafah Interviews Susan Muaddi Darraj

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